Laughing Stock

I want a world where Frank junior and all the Frank juniors
can sit under a shady tree, breathe the air, swim in the ocean,
and go into a 7-11 without an interpreter
--The Naked Gun 2-1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991)

If we don't
(fill in the blank with your choice of suspended civil rights),
the terrorists have won
--The Right's best excuse for abdicating our rights

Can you fly this plane, and land it?
--Airplane! (1980)

Ranger Question of the Day [RQOD]:
If the T.S.A. did not exist,
what would the real unemployment rate be?
___________________

[R.I.P. Leslie Nielson. You only thought you were doing parody.]

Contrary to the ipsedixitism of airport supervisor Philip Burdette -- “I get paid to be paranoid" -- The Transportation Security Administration's job is NOT paranoia. It IS to follow reasoned and responsible, proactive measures to address a real threat in a judicious manner (T.S.A. Finds Itself on the Defensive.)

Airport security is a tactical measure, reflective of a larger strategic posture. All significant terror successes, or near successes, have been a result of strategic U.S. blunders. The intelligence community in the outer perimeter of defense was found lacking.

The events of 9-11-01 did not occur because of tactical negligence at airport terminals. The 9-11 operatives did not violate any existing protocols and boarded their flights legally. Instead, the failure occurred at the strategic level.

The crotch and shoe bombers paraded as successful infiltrators did NOT originate on U.S. flights, and their success was the failure of intelligence and not physical security. The weakness of the screening system is NOT poor security, but faulty intelligence and strategic threat analysis.

Screening domestic fliers is closing the barn door after the horse is out; it does not address any real threat. Airport security does not stand alone -- it is simply the last, visible layer of defense. If a threat is stupid enough to smuggle anything at this final checkpoint, then it is realistic to say that action is intentional to keep the U.S. response at an artificially high level.

If a device of any sort is discovered at a boarding gate, then this is not a success of security but rather a failure of strategic intel gathering and analysis. The T.S.A. can X-ray and grope to the pace of frenzied sexual predators, but that will not increase our security. Layers of security must be neutralized before the terrorists could penetrate any airport security. To date, there are no credible reports that the al-Qaeda threat has the assets to expend on such high-risk operations.

Paranoia is not a strategy, but the failure of one. It is diffuse fear of something that should not be feared. By extension, the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) is a fallow exercise in paranoia. If we honestly believe that our airports are being targeted, it is apparent that George W. Bush's PWOT is a dud. Every time we frisk a U.S. citizen in an airport we are admitting that, although we are still fighting them over there, we are not sure they ain't over here.

If we have perimeters in our airports, then we are fighting them over here (or at least, pretending we are.)

Effective Fire

Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war:
not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice,
nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas,
nor kinds of government, nor any other thing.
We are the killers. We breed wars.
We carry it like syphilis inside.
--Lion in Winter (1968)
________________

The key combat skill for an infantry officer is to be able to differentiate between effective and ineffective fire. Not all fire is the same, which may be a news flash to civilian readers. All rounds fired down range are not the same.

While all fire has the potential to kill you, not all fire can keep you from successfully completing an assigned mission. This skill of being able to differentiate fires is also applicable to life in general, for identifying and accomplishing the mission is the overriding imperative.

The civilian analog is the old saying, "Don't bark up the wrong tree." A coon dog can spend hours barking in alert to his master, but if the raccoon has skedadled up another tree, all of his effort is in vain. The mission cannot be accomplished if the correct target is not fixed.

Combat arms types will bypass ineffective fire in favor of applying their resources to completing the larger mission. Seeing the gestalt is more important than being distracted by discrete dissonant elements. This idea is especially applicable to the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) as it is being "fought" now.

There is symbolic fire being placed upon our unit by the al-Qaeda adversary, but the fires are ineffective and defined by largely by noise and nuisance rather than deadly volume or accuracy. To wit: The would-be Shoe Bomber and Underwear Bomber.

All other domestic threats have been equally ineffective, yet what do our handlers tell us? That the threat is effective and existential. Not! We are not in a beaten zone.

Our leaders fail to recognize, or apprise us, or the true nature of the fire. The al-Qaeda in theatre is a far threat, which does not affect our Homeland concerns. We should focus on the threat that is effective, and that threat is not originating in Yemen, Afghanistan or Iraq, but rather in places we least examine.

Our attention is now being shifted to Yemen in response to the crotch non-bomber, who is instead being packaged a source of effective terrorist fire from that sector. Again, not.

Al-Qaeda in Yemen is not a credible threat to the U.S. Maybe shoe bomber and crotch bomber were merely stooges, straw men allowed to compromise our security barriers to ramp up fear, thereby providing further justification for the endless cycle of fear and violence perpetuated on our side. A reason to carry on the "Security Theater" as Jeffery Goldberg called in "The Things he Carried."

Maybe Yemen fronted crotch bomber Abdulmutallab in a Mouse That Roared scenario. Everyone wants a piece of the American Pie, after all -- get it while it's hot. It is plausible that Yemeni intelligence might have sent Abdulmutallab in an effort to further deplete U.S. coffers via opening a new front on terror, a project Americans seem endlessly on board with.

The incompetent bombers getting through our security are not symbolic of al-Qaeda's prowess but rather the ineffectiveness of our security programs. If not this, then the threat is intentionally being allowed to bypass security.

What should we believe? Either we have total incompetence or a conspiracy, or a combination thereof, none of which is palatable.

Near fire is not far fire, a lost concept on our leaders. If not lost, certainly one which does not service the continuance of our military aggression in those regions.